The Chinese Lantern Festival

If you live in the Dallas area and were planning to go to the State Fair of Texas, don't miss the Chinese Lantern Festival which will be there until the fair closes on October 21.

"Never before in the Southwest, the Chinese Lantern Festival is an outstanding visual delight. By day, it’s a collection of architecture, fabric flora, and fauna figures—pandas, flamingos, dinosaurs. A dragon made from 15,000 porcelain dishes!
By night, the festival lights up, setting the lagoon and imaginations aglow. The Temple of Heaven, Statue of Liberty, animated creatures, and a Blossoming Lotus—these are among the 22 dazzling lantern sets in and around the Nature and Science Buildings and lagoon."

Last week I visited the Festival while at the fair with my wife. I took some pictures but it was not the serious photo shoot that I had yesterday. Several other photographers that had been at the Cottonwood Art Festival last weekend were with me.  The crowd at the fair was huge since it was fair day for the Dallas schools. I think every student in town was there. Trying to take photos on the Midway was difficult. It was more like a cattle drive.

Fortunately, my main interest was shooting the Chinese Lantern Festival and it did not disappoint. As the lights started coming on at 7 pm it was hard to decide what to shoot first. I think I could make ten visits and still shoot new compositions each time. 

Photographing the Lantern Festival is an HDR photographer's dream. Shooting subject matter like this after dark is perfect for bracketing a range of exposures and combining them for your final image. You can capture a lot more detail than you could with just one exposure.

 The "Tunnel of Light" is the last part of the Festival that you walk through before you get to the exit. I decided to have some fun while zooming my lens during the exposure. Maybe I should do this trick more often!

The Devon Tower and the Myriad Botanical Gardens.

Lately, the photography I have been shooting has all revolved around my participating in art shows. Last weekend wasn't any different. While driving back home from Wichita, Kansas on Sunday night my plan was to stop and get a room somewhere south of Oklahoma City. The interstate passes near the downtown area and I couldn't help but notice the lights on the Devon Tower. Several weeks earlier when I had been there the lighting was pretty basic. Tonight there was brightly colored accent lights that went the whole length of the building on several sides. Cool! They also changed colors very similar to the lights on the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher Bridge that I had photographed over Labor Day weekend. Red, green, neon blue and then a pale violet before turning red again. 

After a quick detour, I found myself driving through downtown Oklahoma City looking for a good location to shoot the Devon Tower from. I soon spotted another structure which was also lighted with neon blue. This building turned out to be part of the Myriad Botanical Gardens. I parked the car and spent the next 30 minutes shooting a variety of compositions. This was my favorite of the shots but I definitely need to go back to Oklahoma City when I have a little more time.

The Uptown Theater in Grand Prairie, Texas

Last night I attended an artist reception for a friend of mine who had some photographs on display at the gallery of the Uptown Theater in Grand Prairie. It was also a good opportunity to shoot the theater at dusk, something I have done several times in the past. This is the first time to have a great sky to work with instead of the cloudy nothing that I have had on previous occasions. The top image was made from three bracketed exposures that were combined in Photomatix Pro 4. I also have recently purchased Nik Silver Efex Pro2. I am really liking it! It seems that no matter how much I like an image in color I can still turn it into a cool black and white. It really works well when you are converting a color HDR.

Hamilton Pool and the Texas Capital!

Many times I will take a detour for a photo shoot on my way to or from an art show. Such was the case back in April when I drove to San Antonio, Texas for the Fiesta Art Fair. I left home a day early and gave myself plenty of time to make it to the Hamilton Pool Nature Preserve by mid afternoon. Hamilton Pool is a swimming hole and waterfall about 30 miles southwest of Austin, Texas. Years ago I photographed the preserve with film, a tough scene to shoot when half is in deep shade and half is in full sunlight. However, it is a perfect subject for digital and todays HDR techniques.

 Hamilton Pool

 After entering the preserve you have a 1/4 mile hike to get to the swimming hole and falls. Once I reached my destination, I shot many different compositions, but this is one of my favorites. However, I didn't give myself a lot of extra time to enjoy the area because I still planned to drive back to Austin and photograph the Texas State Capital at sunset. Fortunately, I made it to Austin with enough time for some quick Mexican food at Chuy's before heading on to the capital building.

 The Texas State Capital

On my first visit to the capital a few years ago, I approached the building from the south side and completely missed seeing the underground extension that was added in 1993. Well, better late than never. Part of that area makes a great foreground for pictures of the Capital just after sunset. After darkness set in and I felt I had shot some good images, I drove the rest of the way to San Antonio. The following day I set up my booth in preparation for the art festival. Just across the street from the show is San Antonio's Central Library. It has some very interesting architecture and is painted what many call "Enchilada Red". After the artist's dinner on Saturday night I figured I might as well  take advantage of this and spend the rest of the evening shooting the Library. I was a little limited on what parts of the building I could shoot because they were doing some construction, but did get several images that I really like. Hopefully, I will get a chance next year to photograph the rest of the library.

San Antonio Central Library

Want to combine exposures for a realistic look? Do it this way!

Three or four years ago I first heard about HDR. It was said to be a method of combining a series of different exposures in order to capture a wider range of tones in a scene. This would create an image with more detail in the shadows and highlights, much the way our eyes see things and not the limited range of film or digital. Sounded pretty neat at the time but it was only a little over a year ago that I finally started to learn and use the technique. A Photoshop seminar in the fall of 2008 and a book I purchased both claimed that Photomatix Pro was the best software for this technique and tone-mapping your images was the way to go. Well, tone-mapping has always seemed a little hard to understand and results seem inconsistent. Processing is definitely not over after tone-mapping. Mid tone values usually lack contrast and that needs to be fixed. The Topaz Adjust software seems to fix much of this problem but I usually have to dig a few more things out of my bag of tricks until I am happy with an image. I have also realized that HDR photography is quite the rage now. However it's not a realistic look like I have been trying to get, but a hyper saturated colors surreal look which seems to be the big thing. Nothing wrong with that but not what I want to do with my images and I'm not sure if that was what the HDR technique was intended to be. After all there has always been plenty of plug-ins and stand alone software programs that will take away the "real" look of your photos.
A few months ago I got an upgrade to my Photomatix software. When I opened the updated version of Photomatix I noticed an option for "Exposure Fusion". After blending exposures with it a few times I realized it did a much better job of keeping the image looking natural, real, and believable. I have been considering doing a blog post describing this method but haven't done it up to this point because I knew it would be quite time consuming to do a thorough one. I came across another blog post today which did a good job of describing the technique much as I would have. I have never met Kevin McNeal but he has some of the best wilderness photography that you will ever see. If you go to his blog you can get a rundown of this method of combining images.  http://kevinmcneal.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/exposure-fusion-best-way-to-blend-images/
Some of what I do is a little different than Kevin's method. Like most post-processing techniques there are several ways to get the end result you are looking for. In the next paragraph I will detail the differences in how I do it. I suggest going to his blog and reading it before proceeding here.

 Guanajuato Opera House

The U Drop Inn

 When you choose your source images in Exposure Fusion, you will notice that it says "Note: Blending exposures works with converted files. For good results with Exposure Blending, it is recommended to convert your Raw files into Tiff or Jpeg files." I have taken their word for it and done it that way. I open the raw file that is in the middle of the range of exposures that I have taken. I will make many of the same adjustments in the raw converter that I would if it was a single exposure I was going to use for my image. However, I won't worry too much about the clipped shadows or highlights. The other exposures should take care of those values. I will save it as a TIFF. I then open the other raw files in my range of exposures and make the same adjustments to them before saving. The brightest and darkest exposures may get a small tweak from the adjustment brush if an area needs it. I then choose these images to be Exposure Blended. I will start with the default values in the final dialog box before processing the images. It is easy to get an understanding of what the sliders are doing. A description of what they do comes up when you mouse over them. I have found I can improve the image more by adjusting the sliders. Unlike tone-mapping they don't do strange unreal things to your image if you get a little heavy handed with them. When happy with the way it looks I will tell it to process the image. I then give it a name and save it. I will open it back up in Photoshop. I will then look at the brightest areas of the darkest exposure and see if I think some of the detail is missing from the processed version. I will also look at the darkest area of the brightest exposure and see if it will improve the processed version. If I believe the processed version still didn't retain all the detail in one of these areas then with the move tool I will drag the TIFF image which includes that detail onto the processed version. Dragging while holding down the shift key should line it up perfectly when you let go. I then click the icon for a layer mask while holding down the alt key. This creates a black layer mask which hides the new layer. Then I choose the brush tool set to white with a 10-20% opacity and gradually paint back in the parts of the layer I want to keep. I paint and change the brush size and opacity until happy with the results. I repeat this with another layer if necessary. I will probably make some other small adjustments in Photoshop but the image is usually looking pretty good at this point. I will look at the image and try to decide if it needs something else done to it. If not, its finished.

Day twenty with some changing light!

It was quite cloudy and sprinkling a little as I prepared to head out for my evening shoot. The weatherman had said we had a chance of evening storms. My wife was home and said she heard were under a tornado watch. She also said she had to go to Baker's Furniture in downtown Garland to pick up some leather samples and maybe we could eat dinner at the Italian Restaurant just off the square. Considering the way the weather was looking I decided that plan sounded like a good idea. I would take my camera gear and shoot some things while she was in the furniture store. I started out taking some pictures at the Hubbard's Cafe that I had shot on the first day of this project. The Christmas lights were down and maybe I can get a different feel to a picture of the place. Turns out I may like it with the Christmas lights better, but the weather sure changed after I got there. The sun had already been down for 15 minutes or so when the clouds started clearing. Off to the east I could see the tops of some thunderheads which had turned very pink after the setting sun. Cool... but why can't I be out shooting landscapes when it does this. It would have also looked great behind the Dallas Skyline. I did get a nice shot of the front of Vetoni on Main which is in an old building located a block off the square. Nice place with good food and reasonable prices.

Vetoni on Main

An interesting side note about Hubbard"s Cafe. Do a Google search for Hubbard's Cafe. The second thing in the list is my image of it I put on Flickr. I wonder how long it will take my image of Vetoni on Main to reach the first page of a search?

An evening in Fort Worth!

Water Gardens

Fridays rain had stopped and it looked like we may have some nice light and clouds around sunset as I headed to Grand Prairie to pick up Gary yesterday. When I got to his house I could see that a line of cloud cover was already over Fort Worth and overcast skies was the kind of light we were going to have for our shoot this evening. We got some good shots from the Water Gardens and the Modern Art Museum but I do think a deep blue sky might have improved our images.

Omni Hotel

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Sometimes you just have to keep going back!

Entry to the Corner Pocket

I got together with my friend Mike Pittenger to go photograph in the rain last night. The afternoon had been gray and drizzly and I felt we could get some good reflections in the streets after dark. We drove through nearby Wylie,Texas looking for some interesting things to shoot. A few pixels were used up but nothing terribly exciting came of it. I decided we might try the Square in Garland. I know I keep going there to shoot but when conditions change like this you can create images not possible when it is dry. Good subject matter can be shot in a variety of ways. I also knew Mike had not seen the theater and it would give him a chance photographed it. When we got to the square the streets were dryer than I would have liked. It had only drizzled a little in the last two hours. Mike had some fun shooting the theater and I got a nice one of the entry to The Corner Pocket. We called it a night and we headed back to his place to get my truck.
 I stopped to get something to eat on the way home. I noticed it was raining quite hard outside now. Eat fast.  Bring me the check. Rain has let up. I need to get back to the square. The streets were much wetter when I returned and much stronger reflections. Below is one of numerous compositions that I took from an assortment of puddles that I was able to work with.

Plaza Theater in the Rain #3

I thought I would included this last image. It is the darkest of the four exposures which were combined to make the final image above. If I was still shooting film this is probably close to what I would have had to use as my image of the reflections. It is dark enough to retain some detail in the bright marquee but it leaves everything else much darker than what my eyes could see. Some people seem to think digital is sooooo easy. The truth is that you need to have quite a bit of software skills in order to get the above version instead of what is below. Just thought I would throw that out there.

I decided to go hit some golf balls yesterday afternoon since the temperature finally got back up in the 60's. I also threw my camera gear in the truck because I had spotted this old house behind the practice range. Once again I hoped for some great sunset light and didn't get any. I did use some long exposures which gave me the chance to run inside the old house and pop off my flash. I did this several times in several exposures which were combined. Still not satisfied I said to myself  " why don't you just over process this image like so many other photographers are doing. Some people seem to really like that look." I show two stages of this process below. I really tweaked the second one. What bugs me about both is the glow or halo where the sky meets the trees and house. I have toned it down in these examples but the affect is usually much worse in some of the work I see on the internet.

After shooting the old house I headed back towards home and drove through the square in Downtown Garland. The coffee shop was open and I decided to take a few shots. The second one shows a good reflection of the Plaza Theater in the window.

A New Look to the Blog!

You might notice a little different look to the blog today. I have added the same header as my web site plus the links to all its pages. The blog has been a separate entity from the web site since I started it a little over a year ago. I felt they should work together...and now they do! I also have a link to my growing gallery on Flickr. It is scary how many photos are on Flickr and how many people are looking at them. I decided I better jump on that train too!

Yesterday afternoon my brother went with me to the Mesquite Art Center to see the Photographing the West exhibit of photography. After looking at the exhibit we looked at the rest of the Art Center. We went to the car and got our cameras in order to photograph a meeting room that seemed to interest both of us. The room was much larger than necessary for the tables and 15 chairs. After we left the Art Center we drove through downtown Mesquite and then headed east looking for something interesting to shoot at sunset.  We photographed the steeple on an old church then headed back towards Garland. My plan was to stop by the Posados across from Town East Mall and add to my neon collection unless we found something we liked better but that wasn't the case. It has some great lights just like the Plano location but it is still different. I think got a better CAFE than I got last week at the other location.

A Stadium Double!

 The Ballpark in Arlington

My friend Gary went with me to shoot last night. Since he lives in Grand Prairie I decided that we could meet at his house and then drive out to nearby Arlington and photograph The Ballpark and the new Cowboys Stadium. We had another one of those "not a cloud in the sky" sunsets. Where have all the neat high clouds been for the last ten days? Both Stadium shots were taken from a bridge that crosses a small lake that is almost between the two stadiums. It was frozen solid except around the edges. We have been close to record cold the last two mornings, colder than it has been around here for about ten years. Both shots were 4 different exposures that were combined in Photomatix Pro. Instead of using the tone-mapping feature I have used Exposure Fusion to combine the images. Even after it has combined the images I make several new layers from the original exposures and mask in a few of the best exposed areas. A lot of extra work but I am pleased with the results and it is not going to give you that over processed funky look which so many tone map images have.

Cowboys Stadium

After checking out a few other possible photo locations around Cowboys Stadium we headed to Tom's Burgers and Grill. After a nice 1/2 pound burger we took a few shots of the exterior before heading back to Gary's house.

Tom's

A work in progress!

Last night I stopped and photographed the Casa Linda Theater. It hasn't been open as a theater for a number of years but the front isn't much different than it has always looked. About 6 pm the lights came on and I quickly shot a variety of compositions and exposures. It was also about 30 degrees with 30mph winds and I wasn't wanting to stay out very long. I figured this would be a great subject for a photoshop project and I can do that inside. Some of the lights are out and there are some real estate signs out front. The handicapped sign also needs to go. I have made some headway but am not finished yet. The image on the bottom  is a combination of 2 exposures. I also fixed the perspective, got rid of the sign and fixed the lights. I also got a little tweak from Topaz Adjust. I plan to put some writing on the marquee and some posters in the windows. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

Back to the Square in Garland!

I have photographed the Plaza Theater before but I believe that you can never be too familiar with your subject. The light will change and so will the surroundings. Even if I have shot it 20 different ways there will always be 10 more ways that I will eventually think of. The way I process my images is also in a constant state of change. New software, new techniques, and changing visions on my part. So is the way of digital photography.
When I arrived last night I thought... Oh crap. They are having a play tonight and there are cars out front and people going in and out. I was able to shoot the top image and not include the clutter out front. I did this with one shot instead of an HDR combination of exposures like I usually do. Getting all the lights to be on in one shot is much of the problem. See how they go off and on at this link. It actually was a good thing that the theater was open. The play didn't start for another hour so I went inside and asked to take some pictures. I had never been inside before. The interior is Art Deco and quite well restored as you can see.

I've Given Myself a Project for the New Year!

First, let me wish everyone a Happy New Year! I hope 2010 brings great things for all of you. For myself I have started a new project. I call it Twenty Nights in Twenty Days. My goal is to go out and find something cool to photograph every evening for twenty days. I'm not taking a trip to Europe, Mexico, or the Desert Southwest...just driving from my house and searching for photos. My primary goal will be to photograph after dark but I may not completely stick to that rule. You might think I already photograph everyday, but that is just not the case. I spend a great deal of my time out of town at shows. In between the shows I spend a lot of time printing inventory or editing images from previous photo excursions. Since it is eight weeks until my first show, I have time to focus on a project like this. I also plan to put some of the previous evenings images on the blog each day. Be sure and follow my progress!

On New Years Day I drove out to Rockwall, Texas to begin my search for photos. I did find a park with an old windmill but nothing I was really excited about. On the way back I stopped and photographed sunset at an area of Lake Ray Hubbard that I had spotted while driving to Rockwall. The wind was calm and there was some good reflections, but still no winners. I decided to stop by the Square in Garland before heading home. The top image was taken at Paw Paw's, a small cafe just of the square that I had never noticed before. The second image was taken through one of the cafe's windows. The last shot was another cafe several blocks away called Hubbard's. I have had lunch there before but not sure if I had ever driven by at night and noticed the lighting. Speaking of food, this is when I headed back home for some dinner.

Busy, busy, busy

Wow... has it been crazy the last two weeks. My show in Omaha, Nebraska on June 26-28 went very well. It took most of the following Monday to drive home. This only left about three days to replace quite a bit of inventory that I would need for my next show in Rockport, Texas which would be held over 4th of July weekend. It seemed like I worked almost non-stop printing and stretching canvas but Thursday evening I was loaded up again and was off for Rockport. My brother, Allen, went with me. We made a stop in Salado around dusk to photograph the "City Garage". I had photographed it back in May but felt I could do some more with it. The first 2 images are from our stop at City Garage. Both are HDR images that were created in Photomatix Pro from multiple exposures. The top image still needed some manual blending of exposures to get it looking its best. Its also a challenge to decide what color balance to use because its a mixture of fluorescent, incandescent, and natural light. Auto white balance on the camera did a poor job. The white balance of the "81" sign is quite different in these 2 images.
Yesterday was spent driving home from another successful show in Rockport. We took the back roads and looked for interesting things to photograph. It seemed for awhile that every small town had a Rialto Theater. We found some other interesting subjects but I'm not sure if I got anything I would consider outstanding. The bottom image was taken in Sinton, Texas.

New images from Kerrville!

Today was the first day of the Texas Arts and Crafts Festival in Kerrville. Usually I grab something to eat after the show ends for the day and after that will go crash in my motel for the rest of the evening. I did go feast on some fajitas but after that I decided to go find something to photograph. I came across the old Arcadia theater in downtown Kerrville. Both of these images were created from a series of different exposures that were combined with Photomatix Pro. I like both but I especially dig the Ticket Booth. Anyone out there second that motion?
The show went well today despite receiving some rain and hail in the afternoon. It was quite a storm. My booth is under a large tent that contains about 12 spaces. I am set up in 2 of the spaces. The sides of the big tent are open. The front of my display is 10 feet from the edge of the tent which puts the back walls of my display about 20 feet from the edge of the tent. The wind blew so hard that about half of my work hanging on the back wall got wet from rain which blew in. Some things got very wet, but the clear UV coating did its job and nothing was damaged. However there was some damage to other booths in the show. Some artists are in there own 10x10 tents. An area in the parking lot had about a dozen tents this morning. This afternoon when I left I only saw three. Several mangled EZ-Up tent frames were laying off to the side. Sadly, I heard a potter lost all his work.